In attempting to write about the Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice incidents, the apparent futility of conservative blogging has once again caused me overwhelming despair.

As it concerns the death-by-cop incidents, the post-factual nature of our political discourse becomes palpable. “Hands up, don’t shoot!” is an utter fabrication, exposed as a lie by overwhelming physical evidence and the preponderance of eye-witness testimony, such that no charges were brought by a grand jury against the officer.

There’s much more room for concern in the Garner and Rice cases, but the public backlash in these three cases seems inversely proportionate to the evidence of police wrongdoing. (How many of you are going to Google “Tamir Rice” now?) But the incident drawing the most ire, the Michael Brown shooting, is the one with the least genuine merit – nil by my reckoning.

Presented with the futility of attempting to dislodge an erroneous belief from the public consciousness, one recalls the many other instances of valiant but Sisyphean work by conservative and libertarian bloggers. Whether it is the exposure of the IRS criminality, or the Gosnell little abortion shop of horrors, or the Jonathan Gruber recordings, nothing seems to stick or matter. Obama’s even back to funding ACORN as health insurance navigators.

I will from time to time find cause to write, but for now I expect the sparseness of my motivation to continue. In a world where facts don’t matter, there’s little reason to discuss facts.

Let me say that I am agnostic. I think an atheist says, “There is no God, god or gods.” while I say, “I don’t know.”

Maybe there is a God or god or gods, who knows? I will say that, in my opinion, maybe.

But then we get to which God, god or gods? As Heinlein said, all of them have to go in the hat. Sorry if that pisses you off, but that’s the way I see it.

Maybe Zeus is pissed off we’re not sacrificing white bulls to him or Huitzilipochti is pissed off we’re not sacrificing people, Baal has to be partly happy with our abortion rate (especially partial-birth abortion), but we’re not exactly sacrificing babies to him so his happiness is qualified.

Personally, I’m rooting for a Jonathan Livingston Seagull sort of deal of going up, sideways or down the ladder.

A quote from the Federalist link

My point is not just that it is possible to offer a secular defense of free markets and liberty and the moral values that support them. My point that is these arguments have a power to persuade that cannot be matched just by quoting chapter and verse from the Bible.

Exactly.

I’ve been Troll for a Day a number of times because I try to explain that I can be in favor of civilization without believing in God.

Take something simple like traffic.

A lane ends on the highway, so what happens? If you’re in any metropolitan region, most people line up but a bunch of assholes have to be first so they screw the whole thing up.

If everybody worked together we’d all go through more quickly, the people being assholes screw it up for not just the polite people but for all the assholes behind them as they force traffic down to a crawl.

Civilization is a compilation of like situations, if we all work together, in a Christian manner, then life is better for all of us.

You do not need to believe in God to realize that or to believe that Jesus was probably the very best, most wise western philosopher ever (Bush should not have taken shit over that, he was right in my opinion), certainly the one whose philosophy has led to the best outcome for the most people.

Besides, many of the worst, non-commie, things we’ve done to each other is in service to a religion. There are few, non-commie, things more scary than a despot who thinks he’s doing God’s will. I will also say that communism/socialism/nannarchism is a religion without a god. Today’s leftism is a religion with a god, Gaia, and we’ve pissed her off by being imprius so…global worming.

My point, if we stop fucking with each other, life is better for everybody. It’s that simple.

You do not need a religion to believe that, as Ace says, you merely need to look at empirical evidence, logic and results.

It should be noted, of course, that religious people do not rely exclusively on religious precepts to make their cases. They, too, point to observable evidence and make secular (math-based, policy outcome based) arguments.

A Chinese city has been sealed off and 151 people have been placed in quarantine since last week after a man died of bubonic plague

Ugh. These are people who have less regard for life than French colonizers, that’s not going to end well.

So not only is Tsar Putin I’s state media (they’re like MSNBC and CNN but they have to be forced to lie for their Dear Leader) lying ridiculously about his Cossacks shooting down a civilian plane, but now he’s sick and tired of Teh Peepul acting all upset and stuff.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed several laws on July 22, increasing liability for separatism and violation of regulations for holding rallies.

I just hope Obama does not get any ideas on that.

You have to like the bit about cracking down on “calls for separatism” as he’s fomenting separatism in other countries. That’s a nice touch.

Identifying Backdoors, Attack Points, and Surveillance Mechanisms in iOS Devices… In his talk Zdziarski demonstrates “a number of undocumented high-value forensic services running on every iOS device” and “suspicious design omissions in iOS that make collection easier.”

So what do you think, murderous, commie, Chinese dictators having their slaves put it in or just Apple being Apple?

They’ve both been watching Google pretty closely after all so that’s a tough call.

Really? You people want to be grouped with the Arafish, Kofi, What-Genocide?, Annan and Obama? I respect Israel far too much to want that to happen.

You’ve seen that commercial about the “Framily Plan” where Gordahn shows up uninvited? Well, in real life his name is J. Effin Kerry.

Michael Oren, who until recently served as Israel’s ambassador in Washington, said Monday that US envoy John Kerry was coming to the region despite Sunday’s hot-mic incident making it clear that he had not been invited.

Okay, that’s funny and shows that, despite the faux pas on the Nobel, Israel still has its head on straight.

I wonder if that had something to do with the Obama admin canceling flights to Israel? He’s petty enough for that so…

A conservative of color had the unmitigated gall to show up to a Democratic Front Group’s gathering (NAACP edition) and was rightly attacked in a vicious manner, but that’s just expected and not funny.

This quote from the article is what’s funny.

*Note: FreedomWorks is not funded by the Koch brothers.

Heh. disassociating themselves from an evil empire is kinda funny.

Geez, I just want to send the “children”, their parents and gang-banger friends back to their own countries, but Pelosi apparently wants us to crucify them. She wants us to treat them like Jesus.

Like this:

. At least the classes at elite schools are academically rigorous, demanding on their own terms, no? Not necessarily. In the sciences, usually; in other disciplines, not so much.”

See, the point isn’t to make them knowledgeable or even competent in any arts or sciences, it’s to inculcate them with the Proper Elite Opinions and to make friends with other elites so they can join the Old Boy (and Old Wymyn) Club.

Why else did they hate Sarah Palin? She did not have the proper credentials or accent.

Why else do they all accept that The Science Is Settled?

Anybody with any clue at all knows no science is ever settled and to say otherwise is to show yourself to be too ignorant to be usefully involved with any discussion on science.

As FrnakJ said, it’s merely the best guess, by fallible humans, based on the current knowledge.

Like this:

Republicans should really focus on the IRS tea party targeting scandal and put Benghazi on the back burner. Look, Benghazi should have been a major scandal. But it wasn’t. And to borrow a phrase, what difference – at this point – does it make?

They fucked up and people died. Then they crassly lied about it so they could win an election. Then they lied about lying about it. And not a lot of people really cared. While it is true that they were lying about what precipitated the deaths of several Americans, it’s not like they wanted that to happen. They were just lying after the fact of the colossal, deadly fuck-up.

I don’t mean to dismiss the malfeasance here. Putting on my best Samuel Jackson voice, I hope they burn in hell. News Flash: The Obama administration lies about shit and doesn’t care if people die.

Film at eleven.

Benghazi was mostly incompetence, covered up by lies. The IRS … now there’s something you can sink your teeth into. That is flat out corruption. That is the willful use of the power of the state to stifle the opposition. That’s pretty plainly totalitarian. Lois Lerner could be frog-marched to prison. AWESOME. And this Elijah Cummings angle is pretty promising too.

What are we expecting in the Benghazi investigation? To find out that Susan Rice lied? OF COURSE SHE FUCKING LIED! And water is wet, and bears shit in the woods.